A blog dedicated to cases, insights, developments and best practices relating to the development and implementation of legal holds relating to audit, investigation and litigation in the United States; and trigger events that give rise to the duty to preserve evidence in the United States.

In this mater, the court held that the Port Authority had a duty to preserve evidence triggered by the filing of EEOC complaints by the various plaintiffs. Plaintiffs argued that the Port Authority should be sanctioned for failing to implement a legal hold and failing to preserve performance evaluations that were destroyed. The Port Authority offered a number of inconsistent excuses including that files were destroyed in the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center. The court held that the destruction was merely negligence, and did not warrant an adverse inference charge. No other sanctions were discussed and the plaintiffs' motion was denied. For a copy of the opinion click here: http://legalholds.typepad.com/files/trigger-event---jade-soc-v-port-authority-3-5-09-1.pdf.